Texas Instruments Records, DeGolyer Library

About the Collection

Overview

The Texas Instruments Records digital collection contains hundreds of photographic images and documents from the Texas Instruments (TI) records archive held by SMU’s DeGolyer Library and/or TI headquarters. Each item includes information about its relationship to Texas Instruments’ corporate and technological history.

Collection Materials

The Texas Instruments Records physical collection consists of over 1500 cubic feet of corporate records, photographs, and artifacts. The archive includes records of TI's predecessor company, Geophysical Service Incorporated (GSI), papers of key executives, documents from key projects, early inventions, prototype products, and samples of consumer and business products. The collection documents the company's extraordinary history, breadth of technological expertise, and role in the technological revolution. It is an especially rich source for students of business history, technology, and engineering.

About TI

Organized in 1930 as Geophysical Service, the company was formed to provide oil exploration services using the reflection seismograph. This technology used sound waves to look deep into the earth to search for oil deposits. By decade's end, the company's seismic crews were engaged by the world's largest oil companies in virtually every major oil field.

Through reorganization, the oil exploration unit became a subsidiary named Geophysical Service Inc. (GSI). In 1941, the GSI subsidiary was sold to Eugene McDermott (cofounder of Geophysical Service) and key employees J. Erik Jonsson, Cecil H. Green, and H. Bates Peacock. In 1951, the company name was changed to Texas Instruments Incorporated, and in 1953, TI obtained its listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

The history of Texas Instruments is a history of meeting challenges: where the company has seen a customer need or an application where the power of technology could provide a positive solution, innovative technologies have been applied. For more than seven decades, Texas Instruments has been pioneering the technologies, systems, and products that are shaping our world.

The company is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with sales or manufacturing operations in more than 25 countries worldwide. Current businesses include semiconductors and technology. More information about TI is available on TI web site in the History of Innovation section.

Holdings and Highlights

The digital collection contains a sampling of major Record Groups within the physical collection. The items in the online collection cover the ca. 1930-2005 date range. For more information on how the physical collection is arranged, please view the finding aid.

Usage

Copyright usage terms vary throughout the collection. Each item contains information about usage terms. If SMU does not have the right to publish the item on the Internet, only the item's metadata will be available and the digitized object will be available on a restricted access basis. Such items may only be viewed on campus. When items are available for use, please cite DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University. A high-quality version of these files may be obtained for a fee by contacting degolyer@smu.edu.